Science, Strategy and War The Strategic Theory of ... - Boekje Pienter

policy, is policy’ 107 . Subsequently, van Creveld warns, ‘much of present day military power issimply irrelevant as an instrument for extending or defending political interest over much ofthe globe’ 108 .Whereas this phenomenon occurs within these regions, and may not be the result ofa counter to the Western concept of war and warfare, others point out in the discussionconcerning asymmetric warfare that precisely because the West has been highly successful ina certain style of warfare, other countries or groups will not abide by those rules. CapturingUN observers during the crisis in Bosnia so as to paralyze NATO’s bombing attacks can beseen as an example of such an asymmetric response. In stead of countering the West in themilitary dimension, actors (nations or others, such as warlord Aideed in Somalia) respond inthe moral dimension 109 .One may not agree with van Creveld when he concludes The Transformation of Warwith the statement that ‘should present trends continue, then the kind of war that is based onthe division between government, army and people seems to be on its way out’. However, itis harder to disagree with the line in the same section where he posits that ‘The nature of theentities by which war is made, the conventions by which it is surrounded, and the ends forwhich it is fought may change’. In reaction to the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001 onNew York and Washington authors such as Phillip Bobbit, John Lynn and ChristopherCoker indeed make the argument that the West needs to reconceptualize war for the West’sinstrumental view of war is severely challenged by the clash with groups who experience waras existential 110 .With war and strategic behavior so fundamentally in flux, strategic theory cannotaspire for high standards of parsimony or general applicability and validity, nor one thatholds out for a long period of time. Neither should one necessarily expect an all embracingtheory to develop from the various partial theories, nor a theory with a high level ofpredictive capability, the standard of “hard science”. Strategic theory falls squarely in therealm of political theory in that respect, where, as John Garnett asserts, even the possibilityof a general theory is questioned because it rests on the assumption of some fixed underlyingorder, similar to the physical universe. In the social sciences, where chance and fortune aremore evident, the notion of an underlying order waiting to be revealed is much less plausible;hence the idea of a general theory is questionable 111 .Indeed, what the discussion above reveals is that, in matters of war, even if anunderlying pattern is discovered and some level of predictability established, the paradoxicalnature of strategy guarantees that the pattern will be altered. If social theory differs from the107 Van Creveld, p.142-143.108 Ibid, p.27.109 See for instance Byman, D., Kenneth Polak and Matthew Waxman, ‘Coercing Saddam Hussein:Lessons from the Past’, Survival, vol. 40, no.3, 1998, pp.127-51; Posen, B.R., ‘The War for Kosovo;Serbia’s Political-Military Strategy’, International Security, Vol. 24, No. 4, 2000, pp.39-84; Arreguin-Toft,I., ‘How the Weak Win; A Theory of Asymmetric Conflict’, International Security, Vol. 26, No.1, 2001,pp.93-128; Scales, R.H., ‘Adaptive Enemies: Dealing With the Strategic Threat after 2010’, StrategicReview, vol.27, no.1, 1999, pp.5-14; Metz, S., ‘Strategic Asymmetry’, Military Review, July-August 2001,pp.23-31, Biddle, S., ‘The Past as Prologue: Assessing Theories of Future Warfare’, Security Studies, 8,no.1, 1998, pp.1-74; Dunlap, C.J., ‘Technology: Recomplicating Moral Life for the Nation’sDefender’s’, Parameters, Autumn, 1999, pp. 24-53.110 See John Lynn, Battle, A History of Combat and Culture (Westview Press, Boulder Colorado, 2003), inparticular the Epilogue; Christopher Coker, Waging War Without Warriors (IISS, London, 2002); andPhillip Bobbit, The Shield of Achilles (Penguin, London, 2002), in particular Prologue and chapters 10-13.111 Garnett (1984), p.28.30